“He’s Too Old” was not an argument when FDR won in 1944
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt died shortly after being inaugurated in 1944. A new Vice President, Harry Truman, took over operations of the ongoing Second World War. The New Deal was still implemented. The trains ran on time…
World War II was still being waged in Europe and the Pacific. America continued to emerge as a World Superpower. It is true that it can be disruptive if a President has a debilitating health episode, as Woodrow Wilson did, as Eisenhower did, while in office. But the government ran smoothly. Life, as we know it, carried on
In the Boiling Frog Theory laid out previously, not many are aware of the enormous change that would ensue if the democracy didn’t function anymore. If so many lifetime Civil Service workers were simply dismissed. Our government would be hard pressed to function normally, and we would surely see our standing diminish from a ‘Superpower’ with a thriving economy to.a democracy struggling to survive with too many blows to pull out of the autocratic leanings.
For further evidence, read Michael Lewis’ book on the early stages of our Pandemic under Donald Trump called “The Fifth Risk.” Trump was a disruptive force during COVID, but the workers carried on. Granted, we do need to improve the layers of bureaucracy that flow out of government which is normally just dubbed “Waste, Fraud & Abuse.” But there is no Deep State within the government. Lewis was not arguing for or against democracy in the book. But he was making the case and a vital point that nothing is done if a functioning government agency is not working effectively. That is the entire premise of Project 2025. It is: “Down with the “Administrative State!”
We are ALL dependent upon a smoothly functioning government that uses thousands of non-partisan Civil Service workers. Not loyalists to Trump or to any one party. There is a plan to implement a far-reaching “Deep State’ through Project 2025. It’s the swampiest of swamps where ironically, Trump used projection once again to claim to want to ‘Drain the Swamp’
His followers, lemming-like and with cult-friendly gusto, follow along with the jokes at his rallies as if he is a stand-up comic in the Catskills. But there is an underlying menace we see and hear in his words and phrasing that is the opposite of fun and games. And we cannot be distracted from the true tragedy of the stakes in this election. It is not that we may make a mistake and elect a man who is too old to govern for four years. It is that we will bring into power an authoritarian state that will eliminate all free and fair elections going forward!
One other anecdote from history comes from President Truman’s historic run in 1948. His party counted him out and basically abandoned him. Thomas Dewey was thought to be a shoo-in. Yet Truman didn’t give up. He went on whistle-stop tours barnstorming the country and kept fighting as he took his message of a ‘do-nothing’ Congress to the people. We know that in the end, Truman prevailed and held up that famous: “Dewey Beats Truman!” headline to get the last laugh. Just a thought to remember as we hear many layers of history beginning to rhyme in 2024.
It may turn out that President Biden is too old; and he himself may decide he’s not physically up to the rigors of a National Campaign. But this Democratic loss would surely be an epic loss that would far exceed the impending defeat of a party that had a strong and resilient American democracy in 1944. This current rendering of the Democratic Party in power now pales next to that stronger version that governed during World War II.
Unity has always been a distant dream for the Democrats. Will Rogers famously said he did not belong to an organized party. He was a Democrat. And Independents definitely are the emerging new super-majority in this country. Let us hope that with that label comes a penchant for independent thinking in people that prove they are willing & able to discern the wheat from the chaff in this important election cycle.
